If Covid-19 cases must be reduced to zero, there can be no escape from the trap of lockdown

sir – It now seems that the Government and its “advisers” have decided that no level of risk is acceptable with Covid-19, and that the incidence of infection must be reduced to zero. In so doing they have placed themselves in a trap from which it is impossible to escape.

Even if there were genuinely zero infections in the country, the nature of virus-testing means that a certain number of false positives will always be returned, especially as more and more testing takes place.

Hence, with testing always apparently showing that the virus persists, even if absent, the supposed need for lockdown measures in some form will also persist, indefinitely.

Keith Whittaker

Newcastle-under-lyme, Staffordshire

sir – Whatever data is being cited to alarm our nation, one fact is abundantly clear. No European country has resurgent deaths from the pandemic, despite relaxing lockdown.

In fact, the numbers dying daily in

Italy, Germany, France and Spain are nearly zero.

Dr Jai Chitnavis Fellow in Medicine, Trinity Hall Cambridge

sir – At last, it seems, Boris Johnson has arrived at a much better solution. Let the vulnerable stay at home and the young get back to normal.

Elizabeth Shears

Botley, Hampshire

sir – If, as reported (August 2), the elderly may be asked to stay at home again, I hope I speak for many of us when I say that the response should be the emphatic age-old gesture to the Government.

We have had enough. We want a real life in the years left to us and, yes, risk is part of life.

Philip Hall

Petersfield, Hampshire

sir – The assumption that the latest restrictions are in some way a punishment for misbehaviour on the part of the public is naive. For my Muslim friends to suggest that they have been singled out for special sanction over Eid is blinkered. I remember that Easter was curtailed – and that day, for many Christians, is as big or bigger than Christmas.

I am deeply sorry for all the disruption for everyone. However, none of us has been here before, and we are all finding our way in the dark. Some of the guidance has been confusing and annoying, but think of it as a forward patrol, scouting the road ahead, prone to the sudden opening of sinkholes. As they open, we are steered round them.

People must stop taking personally this awful situation in which we all find ourselves.

David Kaye

Sunbury-on-thames, Middlesex

sir – I awoke on Saturday with joy in my heart that my period of shielding was finally over and I could start returning to a more normal lifestyle.

The Today programme marked the change by interviewing two ladies who queried why it was happening, felt it was a mistake and explained why they intended to carry on as before.

I accept that their reasons for shielding may have been more serious than mine, and that they have the right to react as they see fit. But there must be others who feel as I do. It should not have been beyond the wit of the BBC to find and interview one of them.

Richard Piper

Ickenham, Middlesex

sir – The Government warns that pubs may have to close so schools can open in September. Given that children don’t go to pubs and drinkers don’t go to school, what is the correlation?

Kate Graeme-cook

Brixham, Devon

sir – It was reported last week that there has been no incident of a teacher anywhere in the world contracting coronavirus from a child.

John Jones

London SW19